Matthew McConaughey was naked, high and playing the bongos during infamous 1999 arrest, memoir reveals

‘I was banging away in my bliss,’ Oscar winner writes in book

Matthew McConaughey was naked, playing the bongos and high on marijuana when he was arrested in his home by multiple police officers, the actor’s new memoir reveals.

The Oscar winner’s nude 1999 arrest for “disturbing the peace” has gone down in tabloid infamy, with McConaughey finally setting the record straight in Greenlights, which has just been released.

McConaughey describes the night in question as “a jam session”, with the star deciding to undress, open up his windows and “smoke a bowl” while listening to “the beautiful African melodic beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers”.

“What I didn’t know was that while I was banging away in my bliss, two Austin policemen also thought it was time to barge into my house unannounced, wrestle me to the ground with nightsticks, handcuff me and pin me to the floor,” McConaughey writes.

He adds that he deliberately refused to cover himself up during the arrest, writing: “F*** you, motherf***er! You broke in my house! F*** yeah, I resisted!”

“Before I’d taken three steps up the wall, the Cornhusker body-slammed me back down onto the brick footpath,” McConaughey recalls, adding that six police cars arrived almost immediately, while his neighbours gathered outside of their houses to see what was happening.

McConaughey was eventually fined $50 (£38) for the incident, only to discover that his arrest had already made headlines both locally and internationally.

“Two days later, BONGO NAKED T-shirts were all over Austin,” he jokes.

‘F*** yeah I resisted!’ the Oscar winner wrote

(Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

Among the other revelations in Greenlights is that the star turned down $14.5m (£11m) to star in yet another romantic comedy in 2010, determined to move away from the genre that he had become most associated with.

He also revealed that his father died of a heart attack mid-coitus with his mother.